Love Me or Leave

Second Best- Part 2

Emily froze at the sound of his voice.

Slowly, she turned.

The hallway outside the bridal suite was cloaked in the fading amber of dusk. The air smelled of white roses and old regret. And standing there, in a black tuxedo with his hair combed like he was still seventeen—

Sam Akaris.

He looked older. Sharper around the edges. But his smile hadn’t changed.

Neither had the weight behind it.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice clipped, every syllable wrapped in steel.

“I just wanted to see you,” he said softly. Like it was nothing. Like everything he’d done had been erased by the passage of time.

Her heartbeat didn’t speed up.

It sank.

Like iron.

Like memory.

Because if her life had been a novel, Sam Akaris would’ve been the prologue she never got to rewrite.

⸻

Twentyone Years Ago – Flashback

Emily was eleven when Carol and Dean married. Before that, her life—though modest—had been happy. Her late father was a gentle man, reading her poetry at bedtime and smelled like sandalwood and coffee. She remembered his laugh, soft and patient. Then his illness came. Fast. Cruel. A tumor that stole him cell by cell.

Emily had barely learned reading letters when she learned to grieve.

Dean moved in like a shadow.

With Dean came Sam.

His son. One year older. Cold. Observant. Always watching her from the doorway like a cat deciding if it should strike.

And for a while, he said nothing.

Until the night she got her first period—locked in the bathroom, crying into a towel, unsure what to do. It was Sam—of all people—who slid a pad under the door. No words. Just silence.

After that, everything changed.

They talked. Not like siblings. Not even like friends.

Like two survivors in a house built on someone else’s wreckage.

And slowly, dangerously, Emily started to feel seen.

⸻

Present Day – Hotel Hallway

Emily blinked hard.

“What do you want, Sam?” she asked.

He gave that signature smirk. The one she used to mistake for comfort.

“I’m applying for the bench next year,” he said. “Judge Akaris. Sounds right, doesn’t it?”

“Good for you.”

He took a step closer.

“We used to talk about that,” he added. “Judge and engineer. Our old dreams.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Those dreams died the night you betrayed me.”

Sam’s jaw tightened.

“I still see you as family.”

“And that,” she said, “is the problem.”

⸻

Flashback – Age Fifteen

Emily was fifteen when she transferred into the nation’s most elite high school—a place where only the rich, the brilliant, or the broken made the cut. She was the third.

It was a world of legacy names, silent wars over privilege, and invisible hierarchies. And at the top of that ruthless food chain stood Brian Karanell.

Swimming champion. Top grades. Crown prince of the ruling party’s old-money dynasty.

And from the moment they landed in the same class, Brian made sure she knew exactly where she stood.

“That loser Sam’s little stepsister,” he’d sneer just loud enough for her to hear, but quiet enough that no teacher ever noticed. The class laughed when he did it. Emily didn’t. She clenched her fists and counted her breaths.

He mocked her clothes. Her accent. The fact that she was on scholarship.

But it didn’t stop there.

When no one else was around, Brian’s tone shifted—became darker. Possessive. Unnervingly intimate.

“Don’t waste your breath resisting me,” he murmured once, cornering her in the school library. “You’ll be mine. Eventually.”

Emily had shoved past him, pulse racing with a cocktail of fear and fury. But that wasn’t the last time.

He haunted the halls like a warning. An omen. Sometimes, she’d catch him watching her—not with contempt, but hunger.

She tried to avoid him. He made sure that she couldn’t.

A year later, Sam’s seventeenth birthday came. A party at the mansion. Brian Karanell was there—already arrogant, already dangerous.

Emily had asked why.

“I thought you two hated each other,” she’d said.

Brian had smirked and snapped handcuffs around her wrists—playfully, but not gently.

“Our families dine in the same circles,” he said. “Rivalry just makes it hotter. Give up on Sam. Be mine instead.”

She flinched. Sam had seen it from across the room.

“Get your hands off my sister,” he’d growled.

And then Daniel appeared.

Sweet, steady Daniel.

He wasn’t like the others.

Daniel came from money—real money—but he never wore it like armor. While the rest of their classmates spoke in whispers behind her back, Daniel had offered her a seat beside him on the first day. No judgment. No assumptions. Just kindness.

They’d bonded over something no one else knew.

Grief.

Daniel’s father had died the same way Emily’s had—brain tumor, quick and cruel. She’d been the only one who noticed his trembling hands in class, the distant look in his eyes during biology lectures. And when she passed him a note that simply read “I get it. I’m sorry,” something between them shifted.

A quiet understanding. A friendship born not from shared status, but shared pain.

What Emily didn’t know then—what she’d only learn years later—was that Daniel’s father had once worked as a financial analyst for the same law firm that handled malpractice claims at the hospital where Dean Akaris had practiced. That thread, invisible and unspoken, would eventually become the noose around Sam’s neck, making him an unwanted guest at hia birthday party.

Emily ran. Daniel followed. Held her as she sobbed outside.

Then Sam came again, furious and mysterious.

“Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

She followed. Always did.

He took her to the indoor pool, glowing under the ceiling lights like melted moonlight. Steam whispered across the surface.

“I don’t have a suit,” she murmured.

“Underwear works.”

She laughed nervously. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

There was something in his voice she’d never heard before. It was… weighted. Hungry.

She froze.

He stepped closer, eyes unreadable. “Do you trust me?”

That question again.

The one that had broken her once before and was about to again.

Emily was smart. Top of her class. Analytical. But all of that intelligence fled in the face of Sam’s closeness. Of being wanted. Of being… seen.

“I do,” she whispered.

A lie.

Her hands were trembling as she unbuttoned her dress. He didn’t look away. Not once. Her bra slipped off her shoulder and she felt the air like ice against her spine.

She stepped into the water, thinking it might numb her.

Instead, it woke everything.

Sam waded in after her. Touched her waist. Pulled her close.

He kissed her—softly at first, like he was memorizing her. Then deeper. Harder.

Her breath hitched. His hands explored like they had the right. Her heart pounded with a cocktail of fear and longing.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

Another lie.

Her skin burned. Her chest tightened. She felt everything—too much. The thrill of his voice in her ear. The ache between her legs as his fingers slipped past hesitation. The pain that pierced through her when he entered her.

She gasped, and he mistook it for consent.

It wasn’t.

It hurt. She whimpered. He didn’t stop.

But she told herself it was fine. That love could hurt. That first times were supposed to.

That this was what it meant to be his.

When it was over, he kissed her forehead and stepped out of the water, humming to himself.

Emily sat in the shallow end, numb.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and whispered something only the water heard:

‘Please, let this be real.’

⸻

Flashback – Later That Night

Later, he took her for a drive.

Said he wanted to show her the stars.

They stopped on a hill above the Nerada River. He got out to grab beer from the trunk, leaving his phone in the buggy.

That was his mistake.

Messages lit up.

Brian Karanell:

“Damn, bro. You actually did it? Took her virginity?”

Sam:

“Not great. She shook. Made weird sounds. But hey—if you’re curious, I can set it up.”

Emily’s fingers trembled.

There was one more file. Video. Titled simply: AKARIS_NIGHT1.MOV

She clicked it.

The footage played.

A high corner angle. The pool. Her body.

She didn’t even feel herself scream. But she must have.

Because Sam appeared beside the buggy like he’d heard it from the woods.

“What happened?” he asked.

She held up the phone.

“You filmed it,” she whispered.

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t panic.

He smiled.

“It’s leverage,” he said. “For Brian. Just in case.”

“You—” she choked. “You planned this?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t want it,” he said, voice venomous. “I gave you something no one else ever would.”

Her hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped the phone.

“If I could,” he continued, stepping closer, “I’d kill you and your mother both.”

Her legs buckled.

“You think I don’t know why my mother swallowed pills?” he spat. “You think I didn’t hear the whispers at the hospital? Your mom followed my father around like a damn shadow until she broke up our home.”

Emily wanted to shout. To deny. But the words were stuck beneath years of trying to survive.

“I was twelve when she stole him. And you—”

He laughed. “You were just the sympathy prize.”

She ran.

All the way home.

⸻

Present – Hotel Hallway

Emily’s throat burned with bile.

“I was just the sympathy prize,” Sam added, eyes gleaming. “You stole my father, and I gave you hell for it.”

Then he paused.

“But you know what, Em?” he said slowly. “That video? The one you thought disappeared like magic?”

Emily stilled.

“What about it?”

He shrugged. “Daniel threatened my father. Said if I didn’t delete it, he’d leak an old malpractice case from when my father was still a surgeon. Something from before politics. Something his dad’s old firm had records of. I don’t know how he got it, but he did. He knew exactly where to press.”

Emily’s breath caught.

“You’re lying.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not. And when my dad couldn’t contain it himself, guess who he ran to?”

Emily already knew.

“Brian’s father.”

Sam nodded. “He beat the living hell out of Brian to get that footage wiped. All to avoid scandal. All to protect the Akaris name.”

Emily stepped back, her pulse roaring.

So that’s why Brian never leaked it.

So that’s how it vanished.

Daniel—sweet, steady Daniel—had burned every bridge for her. Without asking for anything in return.

She blinked fast. “He never even told me.”

“Because he actually cared about you,” Sam said. “Not like the rest of us.”

Emily turned toward the staircase.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sam called after her.

Emily stopped—but didn’t turn around.

His voice softened, almost pleading.

“Don’t marry Brian. You deserve so much better. Let me protect you… like before.”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips. She turned slowly, eyes sharp as broken glass.

“Protect me?” she echoed. “You mean the time you slid a pad under the bathroom door? Or the time you set up a hidden camera while taking my virginity?”

Sam’s face twitched.

“You want to protect me?” she went on, voice rising just enough to cut. “Here’s a little newsflash, Sam: You were the first person I ever needed protecting from.”

He tried to speak, but she stepped in, gaze steady, unshaking.

“I’m marrying Brian,” she said, calm and cold. “Because I don’t get to believe in fairy tales. I need power. Safety. Leverage.”

Her voice cracked—just slightly. Her lips trembled. But she didn’t cry.

“I need to survive.”

Then she turned toward the grand staircase. Her back was straight, her steps deliberate.

And this time, she didn’t stop walking.